(From the Ithaca Times:)
This Saturday, Sept. 22, Rootabaga Boogie will present “The Jack and Jim Show,” a collaboration between guitarist Eugene Chadbourne and drummer Jimmy Carl Black. The show will be a part of the duo’s “Think 69″ tour, in celebration of Black’s 69th birthday this year.
Chadbourne has played with some of the music world’s most innovative players, including Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, John Zorn, Sun City Girls, and Carla Bley. Chadbourne, who is known for his eccentric and often comedic live performances, blends performance art with instrumental experimentation. He is cited with creating the electric rake (a common yard rake fitted with a microphone, creating feedback, distortion and noise). Influenced at an early age by titans such as The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, Chadbourne later went on to explore improvisation, experimentation, and noise within traditional music genres such as country music.
Chadbourne, a New York native, has made prior appearances in Ithaca, including a show opened by our own local avant-country guitarist Johnny Dowd. “I have some very dear old friends in Ithaca going back to my high school days and this initial reunion with them over so many years dominated the feeling of that visit for me,” recalls Chadbourne. “It made me realize how lucky I had been to have these friends when I was young and so I wanted to express that good fortune in the music I was making.”
Chadbourne is also a music writer who has published works in magazines such as Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll and online resource AllMusic. (We most recently spotted his writing in the most recent issue of Signal to Noise, in an obituary titled, “Rod Poole R.I.P.: A Tribute to the Slain Micro-tonal Guitarist.”)
“Even at the time of my first garage bands as a teenager, I was also involved in publishing underground newspapers — even in 6th grade! And naturally we published articles about music.” says Chadbourne. “I was a newspaper reporter when I was younger and naturally pushed the interest in music at a time when a lot of the working journalists were too old to write about rock and roll.”
Jimmy Carl Black is best known as the original drummer for Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. (On the opening track “Are You Up Hung Up?” of their watershed 1968 album, We’re Only In It For the Money, Black famously adlibbed “Hi boys and girls, I’m Jimmy Carl Black and I’m the Indian of the group.”)
The Jack and Jim Show was inspired by a Captain Beefheart painting of an Indian man and a jackrabbit, entitled “Jack and Jim.” “It developed when I began a playing relationship with Jimmy Carl Black, a childhood hero,” Chadbourne recalls. Jack and Jim started when Jimmy moved to Europe, where there were many possibilities to explore performing as a duo.”
The Jack and Jim Show features Chadbourne on guitar, banjo and vocals, and Black on drums and vocals. The duo play a mix of country blues, jazz, psychedelia, bluegrass, folk rock, and Native American music, with a heavy emphasis on improvisation and spontaneity. “[And] my own songs, many of them [are] about politics. Our current hit is ‘The Only Kind of Rice That I Don’t Like,’ about Ms. Condoleeza,” says Chadbourne. It goes without saying that Chadbourne also has a great sense of humor.
Since meeting in the early 90s, the two have remained close friends and collaborators — Chadbourne even wrote Black’s detailed biography in AllMusic. “Jimmy is one of the most experienced people I have ever worked with. In addition to playing with Frank Zappa and Captain Beeefheart, he rode in rodeos, served in the Air Force, helped run a donut shop and was a house painter for many years. There are very few practical things you cannot talk about with him,” says Chadbourne.
Over the past four decades, Chadbourne has remained a tireless performer with no pretensions or airs. Perhaps he described himself best when he said: “To quote DMX: ‘This is my life: This is what I know.’”
The Jack and Jim Show: An Evening with Eugene Chadbourne and Jimmy Carl Black will be held this Saturday, Sept. 22 at the Chapter House. The show will begin at 9pm. For more information, 607-277-9782.